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THE 

Young Convert s Problems 

AND THEIR SoLUTION 



AycK DIXON, D. D. 
Author of "Evangelism Old and New," etc. 



$ 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 nassau street 

Boston New York Chicago 






U8RARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Conies Received 

SEP 6 1906 


Qom\iii»i Entry 

/<2e/ c5"/ / ? ^ 6 

CLASS a XXc. No. 



Copyright 1906, by 
American Tract Society 



PREFACE 

The object of this little book is to help young 
Christians, and it seeks to do so by a biblical 
treatment of every subject. 

It begins with a chapter on the Holy Spirit, 
because the young Christian's greatest need is 
the enduement of the Spirit for power in serv- 
ice. 

At the threshold of every Christian life stands 
the question, Shall I join a church, and, if so, 
what church? We do not discuss the question 
as to what church one should join, preferring 
to leave every one to decide that for oneself, 
but we do insist that every young Christian 
should join some church in which Christ is hon- 
ored and the Scriptures believed. 

The third chapter gives a glimpse of the 
Bible in the hope that every young Christian 
may be led to study it carefully, taking it as 
the authoritative guide of life. It is daily 
bread for the soul, and to neglect it is to starve. 

i 



ii PREFACE 

Through the Bible God speaks to us, and in 
prayer we speak to God. The chapter on the 
Bible comes before the one on prayer, because 
we should let God speak to us before we speak 
to Him, and a knowledge of the Bible with its 
" exceeding great and precious promises " is 
essential to efFective praying. 

The spirit of prayer with this knowledge of 
the Bible will prepare one to meet temptation, 
and chapter five is intended to furnish both 
warning and encouragement; warning to young 
Christians to be on their guard against insidi- 
ous approaches of sin, and encouragement 
against despair to those who have been " over- 
taken in a fault." 

Every young Christian, rich or poor, needs 
to remember that the capacity to make money 
is a sacred trust, and that the possession of 
money carries with it weighty responsibility. 
The purpose of chapter six is to promote con- 
scientious, intelligent and scriptural giving. 

The question of amusements is one of the 
most important and yet difficult matters with 
which young Christians have to deal, and a mis- 
take here often means the wreck of usefulness. 
In chapter seven we give principles by which one 



PREFACE iii 

may be guided, and, believing that they are 
sound and practical, we commend them to all 
who would be useful and at the same time happy 
Christians. 

The " Ideal Christian," whose portrait as 
drawn by the Apostle Paul we have tried to 
reproduce in the closing chapter, will, we trust, 
inspire every young Christian who reads this 
book to " press toward the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 

With a prayer for God's blessing upon every 
reader, we commit these pages to Him whose 
glory we seek in the growth and usefulness of 
His children. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

PAGE 

Influence not Sufficient — The Holy Spirit a Per- 
son — Christ Worthy to Receive Power — The 
Baptism of the Spirit — The Spirit our Atmos- 
phere — The Spirit our Sunlight — The Spirit 
our Power-House — The Spirit our Reservoir — 
God with Us — Relation to the New Birth — 
The Fountain of Life — Christ must be Glorified. i 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CHURCH. 
The Church Universal and the Church Local — 
True Estimate — Excuses for not Joining the 
Church —'' Unworthy Members "—" Too Exclu- 
sive'' — "Heaven without it" — "Loss of Personal 
Liberty ''— " Too Young "— " Too Old "— " Too 
Unworthy" — Reasons for Joining the Church 
— Church Needs You — You Need the Church — 
Church Founded by Christ — Increase of In- 
fluence — Influence of Christian Outside the 
Church Against the Church — Confession of Al- 
legiance — Pillar and Ground of the Truth. . . 9 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BIBLE. 
Process of Building — A Library — A Picture Gal- 
lery — An Observatory — An Armory — Views 
of Lincoln, Scott, and Locke — Bishop Fisher's 
Last Words — Bible's Testimony to Itself — Bib- 
lical Definition — Biblical Use — The Plumb Line 
and Yard Stick — Biblical Method of Study — 
The Unworked Mine — Diogenes and Alexander 
— " Grasshopper " Method — Book by Book — 
Word Study — Cato and Greek — The " Under- 
rower '' — Luther's Method — Biblical Motive — 
Assurance — A Vision of Christ 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

PRAYER. 

The Message of Jesus — Petition — Inquiry — 
Need — Thanksgiving — God's Gifts and Acts — 
Tennyson and Heber — In His Name — In Faith 

— In Fellovi^ship — For God's Glory — The 
Prayer Meeting — How to Make it a Success — 
Fresh Testimonies — Earnest Prayer — Unselfish 
Ministry — Brevity in Prayer — Scripture Quo- 
tation and Application 36 

CHAPTER V. 

TEMPTATION. 
Current and Eddies — Selfishness — Satan's Lie — 
Prudence — Cowardice — Diplomacy — Lessons 

— Great Blessings as Occasions of. Sin — God 



CONTENTS 

FACE 

does not Forsake — Better be Weak on God's 
Side than Strong on Satan's — Abraham and 
Pharaoh — Two Kinds of Hospitals — Perpetual 
Victory 53 

CHAPTER VI. 

MONEY. 
Why People are Rich and Poor — Stewards of Ca- 
pacity — Honesty and Love — A Life Better than 
a Living — Doing Good — Giving a Purifying 
Process — Motives — Nobility and Meanness — 
The Dying Miser — Make Money Immortal — 
How to Give — Gospel Beyond the Law — A 
Tithe and More — How Rather than How Much 
— Spiritual Giving. 63 

CHAPTER VII. 

AMUSEMENTS. 
Mould Character — A Test — Avoid Association 
with Evil Institutions — The Card Table — The 
Dance — The Theatre — A Living Death — Sol- 
omon's Experience — A Danger Signal — Inglo- 
rious Defeat — Napoleon and Duke D'Enghien — 
The Botter Way 74 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN. 
Power of Imagination — Paul's Portraiture — Ful- 
ness of Knowledge — A Worthy Walk — How a 
Detective Became a Christian — Fruitfulness — 



CONTENTS* 

PAGE 

Not Imitations — Not Big Fruit — Only a This- 
tle — Julian Le Grand's Kind Word and its Fruit 
— Growth — Power to Endure — Gratitude — De- 
liverance 83 



THE YOUNG 
CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

CHAPTER I 

THE HOLY SPIRIT 

Jesus said, " Tarry ye in the city of Jerusa- 
lem, until ye be endued with power from on 
high" (Luke 24:49). What was that pow- 
er? Certainly not an increase of knowledge, 
numbers, money, social position, or organiza- 
tion. These are mere influences and important. 
They should all be used for Christ. But influ- 
ences are not sufficient for the needs of the 
church. The word " influence " occurs only 
once in the Bible, and that in the question of 
Jehovah to the patriarch Job : " Canst thou 
bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades ? '' 
(Job 38:31). "The sweet influences of the 
Pleiades" which bring the Spring with its 
bloom of flowers and song of birds are to be 

1 



2 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

welcomed and prized, but for the most effective 
Christian service we need more than genial in- 
fluences. The need of every young Christian is 
in the New Testament word " power " which 
has in it the omnipotence of God. 

The power which came on the Day of Pente- 
cost was God Himself in the person of the Holy 
The Holy Spirit, who " like a rushing 

Spirit Personal mighty wind filled all the house 
where they were sitting,'' and as " tongues of 
fire sat upon each of them" (Acts 2:2,3). 
Power is God at work. He uses the Word as 
a sword, and the Christian as an agent. Power, 
however, is not in the sword, but in the arm that 
wields it. Nor is it in the agent, but in the 
Master whose servant he is. God delegates 
power to no one. Jesus said, " Go ye and dis- 
ciple all nations, and lo, I am with you " 
(Matt. 28 : 19, 20). In other words, " I will go 
with you and do the work myself, provided you 
fulfil the conditions I impose. You are to 
pray, trust, preach, and live the truth, while 
you depend upon me for power." 

The redeemed in glory sing, " Worthy is the 
Lamb that was slain to receive power" (Rev. 
5:12), and every Christian, however weak in 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 3 

himself, has no right to give weakness in his 
service to Christ, for power is within the reach 
of all who believe. At Pentecost the Holy 
Spirit, the " Comforter," the " Paraclete," one 
who comes to our aid when we call, came to 
stay, and He has been with the church ever 
since. He is often grieved, and, like Jesus, un- 
able to do mighty works because of our unbelief, 
but He is never absent. 

The baptism of the Spirit is mentioned only 
in connection with Pentecost. Jesus said, " Ye 
shall be baptized with the Holy The Baptism 
Spirit not many days hence " ^^ the Spirit 
(Acts 1:5). And John said of Jesus, "He 
shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with 
fire" (Matt. 3:11). The baptism at Pentecost 
seems to have been once for all, and the en- 
duement of the Holy Spirit for service is our 
entering upon the fulness of this baptism. The 
Holy Spirit, like the mighty rushing wind of 
Pentecost, is to-day the atmosphere of the 
church in which we live and move and have our 
spiritual being. But every man appropriates 
the atmosphere in which he lives according to 
his lung capacity. If he has only one lung, he 
appropriates only half as much as the man with 



4 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

two lungs. The consumption of unbelief, self- 
seeking, or any other sin may so congest our 
capacity for receiving the Spirit that He can 
occupy only a part of our being. 

The sun every day fills the world with its 
light, and yet I may draw the curtains and shut 
the light from every room in my house, or ad- 
mit it only to one room. So the Spirit of God, 
whose presence is light filling the church, may 
be admitted to only one or two rooms of our 
being. 

The power-house is built once for all, and the 
motorman on the trolley uses the power fur- 
nished by the company according to the capac- 
ity of the wire for transmitting and the ma- 
chinery on his car for utilizing it. At 
Pentecost the coming of the Spirit was like the 
building of the power-house once for all. We 
have not to pray the Spirit out of heaven; He 
is with us all the time, but the measure of His 
power depends upon the wire of faith and con- 
secration through which He may work the ma- 
chinery of our lives and bring things to pass. 

The city builds the reservoir once for all, but 
the supply of water for every house depends on 
the pipe which connects with the reservoir, and 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 5 

the water will do the people no good unless the 
channels are open through which it may flow 
into their houses. Pentecost was the building 
of the reservoir once for all. The Holy Spirit 
is to be ever with the church, but His power de- 
pends upon the channels of faith and faithful- 
ness through which He flows into our lives. 

All illustrations fail at some point, but it is 
clear that the Holy Spirit is the atmosphere in 
which we live, and abundant life is possible only 
when we let Him fill our being. The Holy 
Spirit is the sun always shining, but He will 
fill our souls only as we keep the windows open. 
The Holy Spirit is the dynamo which furnishes 
all the power we need through the wires of faith 
and consecration. The Holy Spirit is the reser- 
voir from which we obtain constant supplies 
through the channels of faith and faithfulness. 
To drop all figures of speech and state a blessed 
fact, the Holy Spirit is God with us all the 
time, inviting us to work with Him in omnipo- 
tent power for the salvation of the lost and the 
upbuilding of the saved. 

As soon as we receive by faith the Lord Jesus 
Christ for salvation, we ought at the same time 
to receive by faith the Holy Spirit for service. 



6 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

But in most cases it is an experience after regen- 
Relation to the eration, and sometimes Christ- 
New Birth ians are brought by failure and 
humiliation to realize the need of the Sprit be- 
fore they will receive Him for power in service. 
Charles G. Finney, D. L. Moody, Evan Roberts, 
R. A. Torrey, and many others, distinguished as 
soul-winners, passed from an experience of 
weakness to power with God and men by defi- 
nitely receiving the Holy Spirit for service. 
This does not mean a " second blessing " which 
introduces one to an experience of " sinless per- 
fection '' and spiritual boasting. On the other 
hand, it means the beginning of a more rapid 
growth in grace, with such a realization of un- 
worthiness and sinfulness as we never had be- 
fore. The pure atmosphere to which we wholly 
commit ourselves cures the soul's congestion of 
lungs and enables it to give to the Holy Spirit 
a larger place in its life. The light in the 
house leads us to lift the curtains that all the 
rooms may be illuminated and, as the light in- 
creases, the shoddiness of the furniture and even 
the dust motes in the air begin to be revealed, 
leading us to seek renovation and cleansing. 
The wires from the dynamo supply such power 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 7 

as to make easy what seemed before to be impos- 
sible, so that we cease to depend upon the hand- 
worked machinery in our church activities, while 
we seek to have all our organizations controlled 
by the Holy Spirit. The pipes from the reser- 
voir bring such refreshing streams into our lives 
that we turn from all earthly cisterns, and com- 
mend only these life-giving waters. 

The Spirit-filled life in the Christian's normal 
condition, and we should be satisfied with noth- 
ing less than the best God has xhe Normal 
for us. In John 7: 38, 39 we Life 
read, " He that beheveth on me, as the Scripture 
saith, from within him shall flow rivers of living 
water. But this spake He of the Spirit which 
they that believed on Him were to receive, 
for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus 
was not yet glorified." In chapter four, verse 
fourteen, Jesus tells us that the water He gives 
becomes " a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life." Now, a well is a fountain 
curbed in. There is no overflow. The life in 
us is living water springing up, but not over- 
flowing. The Spirit-filled man, however, is a 
fountain of blessing to others. The well over- 
flows its curb, and sends out refreshing and life- 



8 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

giving streams. This takes place only when 
Jesus Christ is glorified. " The Holy Spirit 
was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet 
glorified," and the Holy Spirit is always not yet 
given, when Jesus has not been glorified. He 
testifies of Jesus; He takes the things of Christ 
and shows them unto us. None of those, there- 
fore, who take from Christ the glory of His 
deity, or refuse to enthrone Him in their lives, 
need expect the fulness and power of the Holy 
Spirit. Christ must be glorified, if we would 
have the Spirit of power in service. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHURCH 

In I. Corinthians 1 : 2 are two phrases worthy 
of our study. " All that in every place call 
upon the name of Jesu^ Christ our Lord/* 
means that there is a church universal, including 
Christians on earth and in heaven, extending 
through time and eternity. " The church of 
God which is at Corinth/* means that there is 
a local church with special responsibilities, and 
the word " church " as used in the New Testa- 
ment refers most frequently to the local church, 
as in "the churches throughout Galatia," "the 
churches of Asia," " the church at Ephesus.'* 
While we thank God for the church universal 
and its millions of redeemed souls, Christ's mys- 
tical body of which each one of us is a part, 
we should give the local church its place as an 
agency for evangelizing the world wit hout ex- 
alting it to a saving institution. 

A missionary in India distributed during an 
9 



10 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

epidemic a quantity of " painkiller " which was 
very useful in healing the people. After a few 
weeks they sent him word that they had de- 
cided to give up their gods and worship his God. 
He, of course, rejoiced, but his joy turned to 
sorrow, when, on entering one of their houses, 
he found the empty bottles in a row on a shelf 
and the heathen bowing before them in worship. 
They looked upon the bottles that held the rem- 
edy as gods. So one may really worship the 
church, which is only the medium through which 
God carries blessing to the world. And yet the 
danger with most people who have grown up in 
an atmosphere of protest against ecclesiasticism 
is that they will fail to honor the church as they 
should, and some of them have many excuses for 
not joining the church at all. 

Let us consider a few of these excuses. 

1. " Unworthy people are in the church. 
Some of them are hypocrites, and, as I admire 
Unworthy ^^Ij honest folks, I cannot join 

People lY^Q church." This objection is 

a reason why you, if you are an honest believer, 
should unite with the church. The fact that 
you complain of bad people in the church proves 
that you regard the church as a good institu- 



THE CHURCH 11 

tion. And you are really not joining the bad 
people. Not one of the Apostles felt that he 
had joined Judas. The circulation of counter- 
feit coin should not prevent a man from using 
the genuine. The counterfeit is a compliment 
to the genuine. 

2. " Churches are too exclusive." That is 
true of some churches, but it is untrue of others. 
Some churches have dwindled Churches Too 
into mere religious clubs, and Exclusive 
they seek only the congenial for members. But 
there are scores of others which are full of sym- 
pathy for the poorest, as well as the richest, and 
will welcome into their memberhip the humblest 
man or woman. You can ifind a church that is 
not exclusive, and hence this objection has no 
force. And if you feel that you ought to join 
an exclusive church, God may use you as one of 
its members to make it more sympathetic with all 
classes. Be careful, however, that you watch 
against the pharisaical spirit which is a subtle 
and dangerous form of spiritual pride. 

3. " As belonging to the church does not 
take one to heaven, there is really no need of 
joining." Let us look at this objection in the 
light of patriotism. Apply it to citizens during 



12 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

a war. Suppose some one should say : " We are 
No Need good patriots ; we love our coun- 

of Joining try, and we want to enjoy the 

benefits of victory. We would like to be among 
those who, at the end of the war, shall shout 
* huzza ' around the flag, but we do not propose 
to be organized into an army. We will stay at 
home, or engage in a sort of guerrilla warfare, 
but we do not care to march in the ranks." 
What sort of patriotism would that be.'^ And 
yet that is just the attitude this objector holds 
to the church. He wants to go to heaven and 
take part in the glorification, after the battles 
of the church have been won, while he stays here 
and takes little part in the conflict. Such a dis- 
position, to put it mildly, is not great-hearted. 
4. " The church requires me to surrender 
my personal liberty." Liberty to do what.? 
Personal To commit sin? To be sure you 

Liberty Jq ^ot want liberty to do that. 

" No, that is not what I mean," you reply. 
" There are some things that I do not think are 
wrong which the church condemns, and I do 
not feel like joining the church and surrender- 
ing my liberty to do what seems to me to be 
right." You are mistaken again. The church 



THE CHURCH 13 

does not call upon you to surrender your liberty 
to do what you believe to be right. To your 
own master you stand or fall. There is, how- 
ever, a higher liberty than the liberty of doing 
what we think to be right. Paul said, " I have 
a right to eat flesh off^ered to idols and to drink 
wine, but if eating flesh and drinking wine cause 
my brother to stumble, I will surrender my lib- 
erty." The liberty to surrender Hberty for the 
sake of a weaker brother, is a Christian privi- 
lege, and no one should stay out of the church 
because of some little diff*erence of opinion on 
questions of causistry. 

5. " I am too young.'' This objection is 
not often made by the young themselves, but by 
parents and guardians, and it is i Am Too 
usually false. If such a parent Young 
or guardian should read these pages, I desire to 
make a plea for the child Christian. I beg of 
you never to say to a child that he is too young 
to become a Christian. Jesus said : " Suff^er 
little children to come unto me and forbid them 
not." He knew that there would be a disposi- 
tion on the part of some to forbid them. The 
child who is old enough to know the nature of 
obedience to parents is old enough to know the 



14 YOUNG CONVERT^S PROBLEMS 

nature of sin. A child old enough to trust a 
parent is old enough to trust Jesus Christ. 
And your telling him that he is too young and 
had better wait a while will set the child search- 
ing after something which may never come. 
Many a real believer has been lost for years to 
the church, because advised by parents to wait 
until he is old enough to know what he is about. 
I plead for the children. Children may have 
fewer temptations to deceive than older people, 
and the fact that one is a child, believing in 
Christ, is a reason why he should belong to the 
church, for we should give, not only our souls, 
but our whole lives to Jesus Christ. 

6. " I am too old." This is a pathetic rea- 
son, and it is sometimes given in all sincerity. 
I Ani Well, you are too old to do much 
Too Old fQj. ij^Q Lord, but if you have 
but a few days remaining, you had better spend 
them in the church, making all you can of the 
time and influence that is left. Try now to 
make up for lost time. 

7. " I am not worthy." We have reserved 
this for the last, because it is the real reason 
with scores and hundreds. They do not wish to 
join the church until they are good enough to 



THE CHURCH 15 

reflect credit upon it. They love Christ and 
honor His church, and they would j ^ ^ . 
not for the world bring reproach Worthy 
upon His cause. I sympathize with this mo- 
tive, but it is not one which should keep a young 
Christian out of the church. The Pharisee in 
the temple felt very worthy. His fastings and 
giving tithes were to him signs of superiority, 
but the publican, who felt so unworthy that he 
could not lift his eyes, while he smote upon his 
breast saying, " God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner," was really the better fitted for church 
membership. When you have joined the 
church, this feeling of unworthiness may in- 
crease, if, like Paul, you have a healthy growth 
in the grace of humility. If you have really 
accepted Christ as your Saviour from sin, and 
taken Him as your Master, you should join the 
church, and consider your feeling of unworthi- 
ness as the best preparation for it. 

Permit me now to submit seven reasons why 
every young Christian should join the church: 

1. Because the chunch needs you. Not 
yours, so much as 7/ou. It will not suffice to 
send your check. The river needs every drop 
of its water, the sun every beam of its light, 



16 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

and the church needs the presence and influence 
The Church of every believer in the world. 

Needs You Tj^Qge on the side of Satan 

do not hide their darkness; let us not hide our 
light. A candle is not lighted to be put under 
a bushel, but on a candlestick, and joining the 
church is putting the light on a candlestick. 

2. Because you need the church. There is 
inspiration in elbow touch. While the church 
You Need i^ primarily an army, marching 
the Church fQp conquest, it is also a training 
school, and you should be among the disciples 
and learners. Association with them will do 
you good. Their sympathy, faith and hope 
will both strengthen and inspire you. 

3. Because the church is an institution 
founded by Christ. " On this rock I will build 
Founded. ^J church," are His own words, 
by Christ jf ^^ ^re really spiritual stones, 
we have no right to be out of the walls of the 
temple. God has carved us into shape for a 
place in it, and the fact that Jesus Christ 
founded the church brings us under obligation 
to unite with it. 

4. Because by union with others you really 
multiply your influence for good. Put fire 



THE CHURCH 17 

to scattered grains of powder, and there is sim- 
ply a flash and smoke. Put the Multiply 
grains together in a cartridge. Your Influence 
and they will help each other to send the bullet 
whistling through the air. Organization great- 
ly increases power. " One shall chase a 
thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to 
flight." The union of two increases the power, 
not two-fold, but ten-fold. 

5. Because a good man's influence out of 
the church may count against Christ. I re- 
member a gentleman in a former influence 
pastorate who was one of the Against Christ 
most cultured and moral men of the community. 
He took interest in religion, even taught a Sun- 
day-school class, but his feeling of unworthiness 
kept him from uniting with the church. Now, 
do not be shocked when I say that this man did 
the church about as much harm as any two or 
three drunkards in the community. When I 
talked to young men about making a public 
confession of their faith in Christ, they would 
point to this gentleman, and remark that they 
were willing to take his chances for salvation. 
He did not see fit to join the church, and why 
should they.'^ He was better than one-half the 



18 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

church members. So that man's morality, 
which he owed to the church, was a weapon 
wielded against the church, and the cause which 
he really loved he was injuring by refusing to 
unite with the church. If good men who be- 
lieve in Christ would keep from doing immense 
harm, they must unite with the church. 

6. Because joining the church is a public 

confession of allegiance. It is an act of obe- 

,„ . dience, and Christ has promised 

Allegiance . i 1 1 . i 

special blessing to those who 

confess Him before men. 

7. Because the church is " the pillar and 
ground of the truth." God wants not only in- 
Pillars of dividual witnesses, but an organi- 
the Truth zation to witness for Him. We, 
as individuals, may In a sense be pillars of the 
truth, but certainly our influence on the side of 
truth will be increased, if we are known to be 
members of the church. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BIBLE 

Some great structures, like St. Peter's Cathe- 
dral, were centuries in process of building. 
Their foundations were laid by one generation, 
and their capstones by another. But more in- 
teresting than the erection of any structures of 
brick and stone is the building of God's temple 
of revealed truth. The five books of Moses are 
the solid granite layers upon which it is 
founded. Resting upon this foundation the 
superstructure rises story upon story,' the his- 
torical books, the devotional books, the pro- 
phetic books, the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles 
and Revelation. 

We invite the young Christian to walk with 
us through this wonderful building. 

First of all, there is the library where we stop 
long enough to learn the facts which cannot be 
found anywhere else. We learn the origin of 
things, of matter, of sin, of crime, of arts and 

19 



20 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

sciences, of the family, of the nation. And 

. - ., here are God's thoughts. If we 

A Library 1 1 i . i 

would develop the mind, we 

must think after God. Great words like om- 
nipotence, omniscience, eternity, infinity, can 
apply to God only, and the man who refuses to 
enter this divine library and think God's 
thoughts after Him is robbing his mind of en- 
largement. 

And here is a great picture gallery. We 
have the portrait of man as he was in the image 
A Picture of God, and as he became 

Gallery through the blighting power of 

sin. There are some very repulsive pictures. 
I saw in the Art Gallery in London a portrait 
entitled " A Man," and on the opposite side of 
the room another picture entitled " A Woman." 
They gave the artist's view of what real man- 
hood and womanhood meant. Greater than 
king or queen is a genuine man or woman. But 
in this same gallery I saw other pictures, which 
showed how men and women have been marred 
by sin, their beauty defaced, their features dis- 
torted, their lives wrecked. And we have in the 
Bible a picture of the evil forces that ruin our 
race. Here is the portrait of Satan himself — • 



THE BIBLE 21 

cunning, deceptive, malicious. And here is the 
picture of every sin we are called upon to shun. 
Some one sent to Martin Luther the picture of 
a man who had threatened to kill him with 
poison. Luther carried this picture with him, 
so that he might be protected from the mur- 
derer if he should meet him. 

Here, too, is the armory in which we may be 
equipped for the battle against sin. " Take 
unto you the whole armor of 
God," "the shield of faith," ^^ ^^^^ 
" the helmet of salvation," " the breastplate of 
righteousness," " the girdle of truth," and " the 
sword of the Spirit." When, at his coronation, 
the sword was delivered to Edward 11. , having 
received it, he said : " There is yet another 
sword to be delivered to me, the Sacred Bible, 
which is the sword of the Spirit," and with the 
sword of steel in one hand and the sword of 
truth in the other, he entered upon his high 
office. As followers of the Prince of Peace we 
may lay aside the sword of steel, but we need 
to take and use the sword of the Spirit in an 
aggressive warfare against all sorts of sin. 

In this building there is a high observatory, 
from the top of which we have a broad and 



22 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

distant view. There Is not only a record of 
An Observa- what has been, but of what will 
*^^ be. The prophets with eagle eye 

peered into the future, and history is a record of 
these prophetic fulfilments. From the top of 
this observatory in the Book of the Revelation 
we look into heaven itself, and down the vista 
of eternity all radiant with the glory of the 
Lamb. Sometimes as we look about us, evil ap- 
pears to be triumphant. The righteous are in 
the minority, darkness seems to gather, but 
when we climb to the top of this prophetic ob- 
servatory and look into the future, our hearts 
are cheered by the hope that sooner or later vic- 
tory will come. 

Joseph S. Speed on visiting his friend Abra- 
ham Lincoln found the President reading the 
Bible. He said to him: 

" I am glad to see you so profitably en- 
gaged." 

" Yes," answered Mr. Lincoln, looking up 
with a serious expression, " I am profitably en- 
gaged." 

Faith of Three " Well" said Speed, " If you 
Great Men have recovered from your scepti- 

cism, I am sorry to say that I have not." 



THE BIBLE 23 

" You are wrong, Speed," replied this man 
of common sense, " take all this Book upon rea- 
son that you can and the rest upon faith, and 
you will, I am sure, live and die a happier and 
a better man." 

Lincoln in the darkest hour of his life found 
the promises of the Bible the light that guided 
and cheered him. 

When Sir Walter Scott was dying, he said 
to his secretary, " Give me the Book." " What 
book? " " There is only one Book," replied 
the novelist, and the secretary handed him the 
Bible. Locke's definition of the Bible has not 
been improved upon : " It has God for its Au- 
thor, salvation for its end, and the truth without 
any admixture of error for its matter." When 
Bishop Fisher was on his way to the place of 
execution, he took from his pocket a little Greek 
Testament, and looking up to heaven exclaimed, 
" Now, O Lord, direct me to some passage which 
may support me through this awful scene." As 
he opened the book, his eye fell upon the text: 
" This is life eternal that they might know thee 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou 
hast sent." The Bishop closed the Book and 



24 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

said, " Praise the Lord ! This is sufficient both 
for time and eternity." 

Such a book is worthy of our reverent and 
patient study. Let us look into it and see what 
The Bible's Tes- it teaches concerning itself. In 
timony to Itself j^h^ 5 : 39 Jesus said : " Search 
the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have 
eternal life, and they are they which testify of 
me." And in II. Timothy 3:16 we read, " All 
Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion in righteousness, that the man of God may 
be complete, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works." In these two Scriptures are four 
things which every young Christian should 
know. 

I. A biblical definition of the Bible. The 
phrase, " the Scriptures," suggests a synthetic 
Definition definition of the Bible. There 

of the Bible were other writings, but these 
were the writings ; and every Jew to whom Jesus 
spoke knew the writings to which He referred. 
They had them in the Hebrew tongue and also 
a translation into the Greek, known as the Sep- 
tuagint, made nearly three hundred years before 
Christ. But it takes our second Scripture to 



THE BIBLE 25 

complete this definition of the Bible — " Every 
Scripture is God-breathed." A noted scholar 
has taken the pains to collate the texts in the 
New Testament where this Greek idiom occurs, 
and he declares that the King James version, 
and not the Revised, is the correct translation, 
and several eminent scholars on the Committee 
of Revision agreed with him. " All Scripture 
is God-breathed " is evidently what the Holy 
Spirit meant to write. Of course, the writers 
were inspired. " Holy men of God spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (II. Pet. 
1 : 21). " The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth 
of David" (Acts 1:16). "The word of the 
Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel " (Ezek. 
1:3). But the writings as well as the writers 
were inspired, because " all Scripture is God- 
breathed." God, who " breathed into man the 
breath of life and he became a living soul," has 
also breathed into His Book the breath of life, 
so that it is " the word of God which liveth and 
abideth forever." 

There are many writers, but one Author. 
These writers were not automatons. Each one 
shows his own style and personality which the 
Holy Spirit uses. 



26 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

II. A biblical use of the Bible. It is four- 
fold : " Profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
The Use of for correction, for instruction in 
the Bible righteousness." " Doctrine '' is 

the teaching, not of the man as he may express 
his opinion in social converse, but of the am- 
bassador who carries with him the weight of his 
government's authority ; and in the Bible we find 
God's official proclamation of love, pardon, 
cleansing, righteousness and peace. 

The word " reproof " comes after doctrine, 
because it has to do with the character which 
doctrine makes. The Bible is profitable not 
only for the doctrine which we get out of it, but 
it is the standard by which we try our doc- 
trines. It proves and reproves. It is the 
plumb-line that we drop by the wall to see if it 
is straight. It is the yard-stick by which we 
measure every creed. 

The word " correction " means restoration, 
and gives a thought in advance of doctrine and 
reproof. It has in it the thought of making 
right what we have found to be wrong. The 
plumb-line may show that the wall leans, but 
it cannot straighten it. The yard-stick may 
reveal that the cloth is too short, but it cannot 



THE BIBLE 27 

lengthien it. The Bible, however, not only 
shows us wherein we are wrongs but it can right 
us. When Canova saw the piece of marble 
which, at great expense, had been secured for 
a celebrated statue, his practiced eye discovered 
a little piece of black running through it, and 
he rejected it. He could discover the black, 
but he could not make the black white. The 
Bible discovers the black and makes it white. 

The fourth word, " instruction," means liter- 
ally " child-culture," and has in it all that the 
parent needs for the growth, development and 
maturing of the child. The Bible is a train- 
ing school in righteousness. Other books give 
training in music, rhetoric, oratory, but the 
specialty of the Bible is training in righteous- 
ness. 

HI. A biblical method of Bible study. It 
is suggested by the two words " search " and 
" profitable." Whatever is prof- Method of 
itable is apt to cost labor. The ^^^le Study 
worthless we can get without effort. Hence 
the strength of the phrase " search the Scrip- 
tures." It means to " look through and 
through." It is the word used in the Scrip- 
ture, " The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the 



28 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

deep things of God.'' As God searches our 
hearts, so let us search the Bible. 

The Bible unsearched is a mine unworked, 
the difference between the Klondyke years ago 
The Unworked ^^d the Klondyke enriching its 
^^^^ industrious owners to--day. To 

learn the Word of God requires diligent and 
persistent searching. A man who died in an 
English almshouse several years ago gave to his 
relatives an unproductive piece of land, so 
worthless that he did not have to pay taxes on 
it. The relatives searched it, and as a result 
they are to-day millionaires. The pauper was 
rich without knowing it, and he was ignorant of 
the fact because he did not search his possessions. 

Every Christian with the Bible in hand is 
rich whether he knows it or not. Let him 
search and find hidden treasures. This search 
implies sight and light. There is need of spir- 
itual discernment. " The natural man discem- 
eth not the things of God." And hence the 
need of inspiration which comes from trusting 
the Holy Spirit as the Revealer of Truth. 
When Galileo turned his little telescope to the 
heavens, he found that he really had a new pair 
of eyes. He could now see the mountains of 



THE BIBLE 29 

the moon, the satellites of Neptune, and the ring 
around Saturn. So we read the Bible in the 
light of the Bible and as more light comes, bet- 
ter sight is imparted; while, on the other hand, 
as better sight is imparted, more light is re- 
vealed. 

The Christian with spiritual discernment can 
afford to " search the Scriptures " with the 
Holy Spirit alone as his guide. Diogenes and 
Commentaries are good, but not Alexander 
good as substitutes for independent search. 
When Alexander the Great stood before Di- 
ogenes as he sat by his tub, the general asked 
the philosopher what he could do for him. 
The rather grim reply was, " Simply get out of 
my light." And any searcher has a right to 
say " Get out of my light " to every one whose 
shadow comes between him and the Truth. 

Any method of searching is good, though 
some may be better than others. The " grass- 
hopper method " by which we Grasshopper 
take a word or subject and jump Method 
from one place to another, collating the 
texts which have the word or subject in them, 
is not to be despised. God shook the world 
through Dwight L. Moody, who was fond 



30 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

of this method. I have learned to love what, 
for lack of a better word, I call the sectional 
method, by which one begins at a certain place 
and goes through paragraph, chapter or book, 
gathering and classifying every thought. It 
reminds one of Mr. Spurgeon's saying sug- 
gested by the worm-eaten Bible which he found 
on the table of a Scottish wayside inn. Hold- 
ing it up to the light, he noticed only one hole 
through which the light shone. One worm, it 
seems, had begun at Genesis and eaten through 
to Revelation, and Spurgeon prayed, " Lord, 
make me a book-worm like that." Such a book- 
worm never turns into an earth-worm. It will 
have wings by and by. 

But whatever be your method, do not fail to 
read the Bible by books. Read Genesis at a 
sitting. You can do it in less 
than three hours. Then take 
Exodus; then Leviticus, and so on through the 
whole library of sixty-six volumes. The as- 
tronomer should look at the heavens as a whole 
before he takes to his telescope. The botanist 
should look at the fields and gardens before he 
takes to his microscope. If you have not read 
the Scriptures, a book at a sitting, you may 



THE BIBLE 31 

take it for granted that you do not know your 
Bible. 

The study of words yields a rich harvest of 
knowledge and blessing. Every Bible student 
should, if possible, have some Study of 

knowledge of Greek, the Ian- Words 

guage in which the New Testament was written. 
Cato learned Greek at eighty years of age, and 
any one of average intelligence can learn 
enough of this beautiful language to greatly 
assist him in his studies by devoting an hour a 
week for a year or two. In Brooklyn an ex- 
pastor taught a New Testament Greek class one 
evening in the week, and a woman over seventy 
joined the class. He said to her: "You are 
going to rub up on Greek? " " Rub up noth- 
ing ! " she replied, " I do not know the alpha- 
bet, but the pastor said from the pulpit Sunday 
morning that Cato learned Greek at eighty, and 
what a man can do at eighty a woman can cer- 
tainly do at seventy." And she persevered for 
two years, till she could read the Greek Testa- 
ment with pleasure and profit. 

Take the English word " minister " which 
represents three words in Greek, one of which 
means a private servant, like John Brown, the 



S2 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

private servant of Queen Victoria; another 
means official servant, like Lord Pauncefort, who 
was the official representative of the Queen at 
Washington ; still another means an " under- 
rov/er." We have in it a picture of the cap- 
tain of an ancient trireme standing in front of 
his oarsmen and giving them the stroke. As 
they strike with him, they, of course, strike with 
each other, and keep in perfect harmony. So 
we are to take the stroke from Christ. We are 
to learn what He is doing in the church of which 
we are a member, in the community where we 
live, or in the world, and when we have a con- 
viction that He is leading in any movement, re- 
ligious, moral, social, or political, we take the 
stroke from Him, and do all we can to advance 
the cause in which He is interested. Without 
a knowledge of Greek, this does not appear. 

Luther said that he studied the Bible as he 
gathered apples. First, he shook the whole 
Luther's tree, that the ripest might fall. 

Method Then he climbed the tree and 

shook each limb, and when he had shaken each 
limb, he shook each branch, and after each 
branch every twig, and then looked under each 
leaf. Let us search the Bible as a whole ; shake 



THE BIBLE 33 

the whole tree; read It as rapidly as you would 
any other book ; then shake every limb, studying 
book after book. Then shake every branch; 
give attention to the chapters when they do not 
break the sense. Then shake every twig by 
careful study of the paragraphs and sentences, 
and you will be rewarded, if you will look 
under every leaf by searching the meaning of 
words. 

IV. A biblical motive for Bible study. 
This is two-fold. 

1. That we may have right thinking about 
eternal life. " In them ye think ye have 
eternal life." In Christ we have Motive for 
eternal life, but in the Scriptures ^^ble Study 
is our thinking about it. We have the blessed- 
ness of the man whose " delight is in the law of 
the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day 
and night." My arch of salvation rests upon 
two pillars. The first pillar is what Christ did 
for me, and that is always the same length. 
Time was when the second pillar was assurance 
of salvation through my feelings. If I felt well 
and happy, that pillar was of the right length, 
and seemed solid enough, but when dyspepsia 
gave me depressed feelings, the pillar seemed 



34 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

shorter and threatened the arch. One day, 
however, I read I. John 5 :13. " These things 
have I written unto you that beheve on the 
name of the Son of God, that ye may know that 
ye have eternal hfe." And I saw that I was 
expected to trust the Scriptures and not my 
feelings for assurance. From that day the pil- 
lar of assurance has been all the time of the 
same length, for God's word never changes. 
Feelings may come and go, but " I keep on be- 
lieving " the promise, I think I have eternal 
life, not because I feel so and so, but because 
God says so. Now, the pillar of Christ's merit 
and the pillar of His promise are of the same 
length, and the arch of salvation is no longer 
threatened by changing feelings. 

2. That we may learn of Jesus. " They 
are they which testify of me." Few things are 
more interesting and none more profitable than 
tracing the Messianic idea through the Bible. 
It begins with the curse upon the serpent in Gen- 
esis, and closes with " the Lamb as it had been 
slain in the midst of the throne " in the Reve- 
lation. In Christian character the image of 
Christ is marred by imperfections, if not by 
sins, but in the Scriptures the portrait is per- 



THE BIBLE 35 

feet. A friend described to me a painting 
which hung on the wall of his boyhood home. 
When you first saw it, it was a beautiful land- 
scape with trees, streams, houses and people, 
but, while gazing upon it, all these beautiful 
things began to form into a human face. On a 
closer inspection you perceived that the whole 
picture was intended to give the face of Christ. 
The devout student of the Scriptures is con- 
stantly having experiences like this. He sees 
in the Bible trees of faithfulness, streams of 
truth, landscapes of loveliness in deed and char- 
acter, but they are all so arranged in their rela- 
tion to Christ as to bring out the features of 
His character. While we thus see Him as He is, 
we become more and more like Him, until by 
and by we shall see His unveiled face and be 
completely transformed into His likeness. 
" Search the Scriptures" with a view to seeing 
Jesus. 



CHAPTER IV 



PRAYER 



The disciples said to Jesus, " Lord, teach us 
to pray,'' and His message concerning prayer is 
five-fold: no part complete without the other 
four parts. 

The first part of the message is that in prayer 
we ask for something and receive it. Prayer 
I. Definite is petition. " Ask and it shall 

Petition be given you" (Luke 11:9). 

" Whatsoever ye shall ask, that will I do." " If 
ye shall ask anything I will do it" (John 
14:13, 14). Prayer is not meditation on the 
good. Prayer is not living right, though liv- 
ing right has a relation to prayer. Prayer is 
not quietly doing the will of God. As defined 
by Jesus, it is asking of Him and receiving what 
we ask. 

Our Lord uses four words in the Greek which 
are translated by the English word " to pray " 

36 



PRAYER 37 

and a study of these will reveal the impulse 
that prompts the asking. One Inauir 

word has in it the thought of 
inquiry. We go to God in prayer to ask ques- 
tions and learn of Him what we ought to do. 
We are ignorant. There are many things we 
cannot understand, and through prayer we seek 
an explanation. This is the word which Jesus 
uses when He says of the sin unto death, " I do 
not say that he shall pray for it" (I John 
5:16), which simply means, " I do not say that 
he shall inquire about it." Leave the matter 
entirely with God. Seek the salvation of all 
without reference to any unpardonable sin. 

Another word has in it the sense of need. It 
is the word used in describing the prayer meet- 
ing after Pentecost : " When 
they had prayed, the place was 
shaken where they were assembled" (Acts 
4:31). There was a deep sense of need which 
appealed to God and moved " the arm that 
moves the world." Mr. Potts, the Quaker, 
walking about Valley Forge in the snow, heard 
the voice of prayer in the neighboring woods, 
and on approaching he found George Washing- 
ton on his knees, expressing to God the great 



38 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

need of the army and the country. That was 
prayer prompted by a sense of need. 

Another word has in it the thought of call- 
ing to one's aid^ and was used by Christ when 
He said, " Thinkest thou that I 
cannot now pray to my Father, 
and He will presently give me more than twelve 
legions of angels?" (Matt. 26:53). This im- 
plies that God in answering prayer comes to the 
aid of His people. A little boy on board a 
ship understood this. He was ordered by the 
captain to perform the very dangerous feat of 
going up into the rigging during a storm. Be- 
fore going up, he went down into the hold for 
a few minutes, and then did successfully what 
he was commanded. On being asked why he 
went down into the hold, he said : " I went 
down to ask God to go with me up there." He 
believed in a God who is a " present help " in 
time of need, and this God would have us pray 
for His aid. 

The remaining word has in it the thought 

of thanksgiving and praise. This is the word 

^ . most frequently used by Christ. 

Gratitude ,, _._ ^ i j xi. / 

Watch and pray that ye enter 

not into temptation" (Matt. 26:41), as if a 



PRAYER 89 

grateful, praiseful spirit in our petitions makes 
a sort of double shield of safety. 

All of these words have in them the primary 
thought of asking that we may receive, whether 
the asking be prompted by a spirit of inquiry, 
a sense of need, a desire for help, or a spirit of 
praise, and we rejoice that God never wearies 
with our petitions. He delights to " give good 
things to them that ask Him" (Matt. 7:11). 

But we need more than gifts from God. 
Our greatest need many times is that He shall 
act for us rather than give to us, God's Gifts 
and it is comforting to learn that *"^ ^^^^ 
God works in answer to prayer. " Ask and it 
shall be given unto you," is not plainer than the 
other promise, " Whatsoever ye shall ask that 
will I do." God's doings may be more precious 
than His gifts. In this connection Jesus tells 
us how difficulties great as mountains may be 
removed. The man who prays can face the 
difficulties and by the power of prayer remove 
them. He can " say to this mountain " ; but he 
must first learn to speak to God in prayer, if he 
would speak to the mountain in power. There 
is no ignoring difficulties as if they were insig- 
nificant. But while we recognize the mountain 



40 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

as high and heavy, we beHeve in a God with 
power great enough to cast it into the sea. 
Tennyson is right when he sings: 

" More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let 

thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves, and those who call them 

friends ? 
For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

And yet I sympathize with Dr. Lorimer's 
criticism of the last line. " Bound by gold 
chains about the feet of God" implies subjec- 
tion, if not slavery, and does not savor of the 
familiar relations between child and father. A 
better figure would be " Bound with silken cords 
about the heart of God." " Ye are my 
friends," said Jesus, " if ye do whatsoever I 
command you " (John 15 : 14), and He delights 
to be our friend by doing what we ask Him. 
There is more in prayer than abject submission. 



PRAYER 41 

Reginald Heber, I think, sings the truth more 
clearly than Tennyson: 

" There is an eye that never sleeps, 

Beneath the wing of night; 
There is an ear that never shuts, 

When sink the beams of light. 
There is an arm that never tires. 

When human strength gives way; 
There is a love that never fails. 

When earthly loves decay. 
That eye is fixed on seraph throngs ; 
That ear is filled with angels' songs; 
That arm upholds the world on high; 
That love is throned beyond the sky. 
But there's a power which men can wield 

When mortal aid is vain. 
That eye, that arm, that love to reach, 

That listening ear to gain; 
That power is prayer, which soars on high, 
And feeds on bliss beyond the sky." 

The second part of the message of Jesus con- 
cerning prayer is that we should ask in His 
name. " Whatsoever ye shall 2. In His 

ask m my name, that will I do," Name 

He tells us. And again, " If ye shall ask any- 
thing in my name, I will do it." This, of 
course, means for the sake of Christ, but 



42 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

'^ name " in the Bible stands for character, so 
that when we pray in the name of Christ we 
are praying in the character of Christ. We ask 
for what can be given us according to His 
character. I cannot, therefore, expect my sel- 
fish prayers to be answered any more than the 
prayers of James and John for fire upon the 
Samaritans were answered. It was not accord- 
ing to the character of Christ. It would be un- 
fitting to ask a man to steal in the name of an 
honest man, or to lie in the name of One who is 
Truth, or to be impure in the name of the Most 
Holy One. 

" If we ask anything according to His will, 
He heareth us," we are told and so the model 
prayer is the standard of His will. " Our 
Father who art in heaven " means that His will 
is for us to be filial towards God and social to- 
wards each other. Whatever a loving father 
would give to his children we may ask of God, 
but we come, not saying " my Father," but 
" our Father." We ask for what is best for 
the whole family. " Hallowed be thy name " 
shows that His will is that we should be rever- 
ential, for adoration is an element of prayer. 
" Thy kingdom come " reveals His will that 



PRAYER 43 

we should be missionary in spirit. " Thy will be 
done on earth as in heaven " tells us that His 
will is for us to be submissive, while we seek to 
transform earth into heaven. " Give us this 
day our daily bread " plainly shows that it is 
His will for us to have the necessities of life for 
body and soul. " And lead us not into tempta- 
tion '' indicates that it is His will for us to be 
cautious and wary of evil. " But deliver us 
from the evil one " assures us that it is His 
will for us to be victorious over Satan, however 
severe his assaults. 

The third part of the message of Jesus con- 
cerning prayer is that in prayer we ask in faith 
for something in His name. He 
says in Mark 11 : 24, "What 3- n Faith 
things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that 
ye receive them, and ye shall have them." 
Again in Matt. 21 :22, " All things whatsoever 
ye shall ask in prayer believing ye shall receive." 
"Dost thou believe.'*" was the test question. 
" All things are possible to him that believeth." 
To the blind men who had confessed their faith 
Jesus said, " According to your faith be it unto 
you," and their sight was restored. Unless a 
patient has faith In the physician he is certain 



M YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

not to commit himself unreservedly to his treat- 
ment. Unless men in business trust each other, 
they cannot successfully transact their affairs. 
Faith is the foundation of the home, of the state, 
and of commerce. Without confidence there can 
be no home, no state, no system of trade. So 
that when we think of praying for a thing we 
have need to ask one question. Is it within the 
circle of God's will? If so, believe that God 
will grant it, and with holy boldness press your 
petition until He does so. The fact that I desire 
it is permission to pray, for " What things so- 
ever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye re- 
ceive them, and ye shall have them." And prayer 
is the crucible which tests the quality of our 
desires. After we have brought them to God in 
prayer, we are not long in discovering whether 
or not they are according to His will, and if we 
have a desire which we cannot bring to God in 
prayer, we had better take the advice of Cole- 
ridge when he says: 

" If for any wish thou darest not pray, 
Then pray to God to cast that wish away.'' 

The fourth part of the message of Jesus con- 



PRAYER 45 

ceming prayer is that in prayer we ask in faith 
and fellowship for something in ^^ j^ pel- 

His name. " If ye abide in me lowship 

and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what 
ye will and it shall be done unto you" (John 
15 : 7). These words occur in the " vine " chap- 
ter of John's Gospel, and we have in them the 
relation of the branch to the vine. Child-life 
is one thing, and branch-life is another. The 
child is bom and then grows away from its 
mother. Children can live after the mother dies, 
but the branch is dependent every moment upon 
the vine. If the vine dies, the branch dies ; and 
the branch dies, if separated from the vine. Just 
as the branch receives its vitality all the time 
from the vine, so we are to receive our life 
every moment from God, if we would be fruitful, 
for this abiding in Christ refers directly to the 
fruit-bearing life. The verse which follows says : 
" Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear 
much fruit." The prayerful life is the fruitful 
life. If we abide in Christ, while His words 
abide in us, it will be easy for us to " pray with- 
out ceasing," for the life of Christ in us gravi- 
tates toward God. 

The full message of Jesus concerning prayer 



46 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

is that In prayer we ask in faith and fellowship 
5. In God's f^^ something in His name, that 
Glory God may be glorified. " Whatso- 

ever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, 
that the Father may be glorified in the Son'' 
(John 14 : 13). James therefore gives the secret 
of so many unanswered prayers. " Ye ask and 
receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may 
consume it upon your desires.'^ God does not 
allow us to abuse prayer by making it a means 
of gratifying the self -life. If so, it would be 
more of a curse than a blessing. 

The week night devotional meeting in which 
the church assembles for praise, prayer, and 
The Prayer testimony, is not only the ther- 
Meeting mometer which indicates the de- 

gree of spirtual life, but it is indispensable for 
the development of young Christians, and the 
young people's meeting, though important, 
should not be permitted to take its place. The 
mingling of old and young is necessary for the 
ideal devotional meeting. The young need the 
ripe experience of mature Christians, while ma- 
ture Christians need to keep in touch with the 
enthusiasm and inspiration of youth. Young 
Christians can help the pastor make the devo^ 



PRAYER 4T 

tional meeting a success, and we are persuaded 
that many pastors are more concerned about 
these meetings than about their Sunday sermons. 
Byron wrote: 

" Society now is one polished horde, 
Formed of two tribes, the bores and the 
bored.'' 

Sad to say, these lines describe too many of 
our prayer meetings. The pious brethren and 
sisters go to them expecting to be bored, but 
feeling that, for the sake of the cause and the 
pastor, it is their duty to bear this cross. 

It is evident that the Apostolic prayer meet- 
ing described in Acts 4 : 22-30 was brimful of 
life. " Being let go " the week following, not one 
of them would have thought it a cross to go to 
such a prayer meeting. Now what was the 
secret .f* 

1. They told their recent experiences. "They 
reported all that the chief priests and elders 
had said unto them." Some good Fresh Tes- 
people have experiences of many timonies 
years which they delight to tell, and it is well to 
tell them, but not too often to the same company. 
After they have been told about three times, the 



48 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

people know them by heart, but God's recent 
dealings with us are always fresh, and the young 
Christian has such experiences. The Psalmist 
said, " Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and 
I will declare what He hath done for my soul." 
The great deliverance from sin we may never 
cease to speak of. Paul's story of his experience 
on the way to Damascus never grew old. But 
God does more for us than deliver us. He leads 
and comforts and strengthens. Of these recent 
experiences let us not be slow to speak. 

2. They prayed. Not to fill up the time, but 
because they had something to pray for. Busy 
Earnest ^^^h their Master's work, their 

Prayer faithfulness had provoked bitter 

persecution. They prayed for boldness because 
they felt the need of it. They were more solici- 
tous about the success of the cause they loved 
than about their own safety or comfort. They 
yearned for power to heal and do wonders " by 
the name of thy holy child Jesus." Their desires 
were not self -centered. The burden of souls was 
upon them. 

Many of our prayer meetings die for the want 
of an object. Pastor and people have met 
simply because it is customary to meet once a 



PRAYER 49 

week. " The signs and wonders " of conversion 
are among the things of the past. 

The brethren thank the Lord for the privilege 
of meeting " where prayer is wont to be made," 
when, if the bare truth were told, they would be 
just as thankful for the privilege of staying 
at home. They ask of God that " all things 
may be done with an eye single to His glory," 
and It would take a microscope to see really what 
Is being done to glorify Him. How different 
our prayer meetings when the joy of salvation 
fills every heart, and the cry for saving power Is 
as the voice of one man. The songs, talks, and 
prayers then have life, and " being let go " peo- 
ple are anxious to be In such company. 

Too many church members fancy that they 
belong to an Institution whose duty It is to give 
them social and Intellectual enjoyment, and to 
benefit them; whereas the Idea of Christ, when 
He founded the church, was to make It a channel 
of blessing to others. It receives only as it gives. 
" To minister, not to be ministered unto " is the 
genius of Christianity. Could we infuse that 
thought into our prayer meetings, we should 
save them from lifelessness. To pray for others 
and for ourselves that we may help others; to 



50 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

talk for the comfort of others, to live for others 
— a body of men and women met with such an 
object in view cannot have a dull time. 

Though these Apostles were so earnest and 
wanted so much, their prayers were not long. 
The one reported can be repeated 
in half a minute. Prayers are 
short in proportion to their earnestness. Men 
are not wordy when they feel a pressing need. 
" Lord, save, I perish," cried sinking Peter. 
" Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me : 
my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil," 
was a mother's earnest prayer, while the publi- 
can poured out his penitent soul into one short 
sentence. 

" Bless mamma, and papa, and John, and 
Mary, and James and everybody," prayed a little 
boy at his mother's knee. " If you had said 
' everybody ' first," said the younger brother 
James, " you need not have made such a long 
prayer." And we agree with James sometimes, 
when a good brother closes a ten minutes' prayer 
with the petition, " Lord, if we have failed to 
ask, fail not thou to give." If he had said that 
about ten minutes sooner, he might have saved 
the life of a good prayer meeting. God would 



PRAYER 61 

have us to be definite in our praying, but definlte- 
ness does not demand length. 

And prayer is more than begging. Praise 
should always mingle with petition, for God an- 
swers praise. Many prayers are powerless, be- 
cause they do not praise God for what He has 
already done. Our Father expects at least a 
" thank you " from His children for gifts al- 
ready bestowed before He lavishes others. " Gim- 
me a cent," said an urchin on a street in New 
York. The gentleman to whom he spoke gave 
him a cent. " Gimme 'nuther," was the quick 
response, and the gentleman wished that he had 
not given a cent to the ungrateful little beggar. 
" Give, give, give," we say, while God waits for 
some recognition of the gifts already bestowed. 
" In everything by prayer and supplication, with 
thanksgiving, let your bequests be made known 
unto God" (Phil. 4:6). 

But we are not called upon to thank God for 
everything every time we pray. In private de- 
votions let us pray and praise as long as we 
wish, but in public prayer be brief, and the in- 
terest of the meeting will not suffer. 

3. Scripture was freely quoted. The second 
Psalm expressed their feelings. A religious meet- 



62 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

ing where God's Word is not honored will be 
Quote Scrip- ^ failure. " Did you have a bless- 
*"^^ ing to-night? " asked a wife of 

her husband on his return from church. " No," 
was the curt reply, " there was nothing there 
for God to bless; not a sentence of the Word 
was in sermon or prayer." If all young Chris- 
tians would be careful to come to the prayer 
meeting with a text of Scripture and give it 
with or without comment, the interest and power 
of our meetings would be multiplied. Speak to 
God in prayer; let God speak to you through 
His Word, and blessing will follow, as we see 
it followed this Apostolic prayer meeting. 



CHAPTER V 

TEMPTATION 

Standing by a river and watching the water 
near the shore we may think that it is flowing 
up stream, but looking out to the center we see 
that the current is in the right direction. The 
eddies near the shore have deceived us. So with 
good men. The current of their lives is all right, 
but looking at only a part of their characters 
we may sometimes think that they are all wrong. 
Abraham was a good man with the current of 
his life toward heaven, but he sinned, and if 
Abraham, " the father of the faithful " and 
" the friend of God " was led by insidious temp- 
tation into sin, we are all in danger. A study of 
Abraham's temptation and sin, as recorded in 
Genesis 12 : 10-20, will, I hope, put us on our 
guard and make us strong to overcome. 

It is evident that Abraham's sin grew out of 
some roots that were in his character at first. 

Abraham was afraid that he would lose some- 
5S 



54 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

thing. It is evident that he did not ask God 

if he might go down into Egypt, 
ocliisnncss /» • • i 

The famine was sore m the 

land; there was danger that the people should 
be in want. Abraham was rich. He could pre- 
serve his property as well as his life by going 
down into the land of plenty. He was led by 
his self-interest. He might have done good in 
Canaan and won some people to his faith, if, like 
John Clough in Telugu, he had remained and 
shared with them his plenty ; but not he. With- 
out consulting the Lord he decided that the best 
thing to do was to leave the place of famine and 
go to the place of safety. 

We are in danger of being led by our interests 
rather than by the Lord. Christ was thus tempt- 
ed. He was hungry and the tempter suggested 
that He make stones into bread. But Jesus re- 
pelled the tempter. He chose hunger rather 
than obedience to Satan. " But we must live." 
" Not so," said the martyrs. If John Huss had 
acted upon the principle which the Devil an- 
nounced to Job, " All that a man hath will he 
give for his life," he would never have been 
burned at Constance. His friends tried to per- 
suade him that, under the circumstances, it was 



TEMPTATION 55 

necessary that he should modify his views. But 
Huss stood for the truth. There never could 
have been martyrs, if they had accepted the prin- 
ciple that they ought to be led by their worldly 
interests rather than by the Lord. They chose 
deliberately to sacrifice their bodies to their prin- 
ciples. Abraham was led into this temptation by 
selfishness. He was immature in his faith; had 
just come out of paganism, and this fact may be 
something of an excuse for him; but all the 
same he ought to have consulted God, and we 
believed that if he had, he would have been led 
to stay in Canaan, and do what he could for the 
starving people. 

Prudence is not among the graces of the 
Spirit. There is a holy recklessness, a spirit that 
does the will of God, let the result 
be what it may. It was very 
prudent in Abraham to agree with his wife to lie, 
that he might protect himself, but it was not 
true nor honorable ; and, when we make prudence 
our guide, it is very difBcult to be true. Care- 
lessness as to results, when we are doing right, 
is a virtue to be coveted. 

Abraham, it seems, was afraid to die for the 
truth. He preferred the sin of lying, even, to 



56 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

the danger of being killed. And he tempted 

Sarah. We blame Eve for tempt- 
Cowardice , . . 

ing Adam, but in this case the 

woman was not the transgressor. Sarah obeyed 
her lord, and remained true to him. She might 
have remonstrated against his sin; but she did 
not. Selfishness and prudence are the parents 
of cowardice. When a man wants to save his 
own skin at whatever cost, his prudence will 
suggest that he may commit sin in order to do 
it. Abraham at this juncture was a moral cow- 
ard. He showed afterwards that he was phys- 
ically brave. He knew how to organize an army 
and make conquest, but here he fell before the 
possibility of being killed for his wife. There 
are men who can rush into the cannon's mouth 
without a tremor, but quail before their moral 
enemies. They are strong in the excitement of 
the rush of battle, but in the quiet of their lives, 
when sin comes in subtle form, they are not 
heroic enough to resist it. Better for Abraham 
to have boldly died than to have ignominiously 
Ked. 

Sarah was the half-sister of Abraham, and he 
told a half-truth which was to Pharaoh a whole 
lie. It was the truth with a mental reserva- 



TEMPTATION 57 

tion. He acted a double part, and such sin 
is very common. When a man 
wishes to make a trade he is 
tempted to tell the favorable things and to keep 
back the unfavorable. On Wall Street thou- 
sands of lies are told daily just because iii 
would be against the selfish interests of men to 
tell the whole truth. It may be that no out- 
right lie is told; what is said may be true, but 
it is not all the truth, and is therefore prac- 
tically a lie. It is possible to utter the vilest 
slander without telling an outright falsehood. 
The slanderer simply tells a part of the truth; 
the part that is damaging, while the whole 
truth would change the moral phase of the 
case entirely. Abraham did not speak as be- 
fore God; he spoke as before Pharaoh. To 
Pharaoh he was the brother of Sarah; to God 
he was half-brother and husband. God is our 
umpire of right and wrong, and a thing is bad 
or good, lie or truth, just as it appears to God. 
All through the New Testament we are urged 
to live as before God, and the man who does that 
will never be a hypocrite. 

Let us now draw some lessons from this sin 
of the " father of the faithful," 



68 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

1. We may make our greatest blessings oc- 
casions of sin. It was something for Abraham 
Occasions ^^ have a wife like Sarah. She 

of Sin ^g^g ]^^|(j forth by Peter as the 

model woman, " whose daughters ye are, as long 
as ye do well " (I Pet. 3:6). Beautiful, indus- 
trious, faithful, she was such a woman as a hus- 
band might well be proud of. It was her beauty, 
so greatly prized by Abraham, which led him 
into sin. If she had been ugly and deformed, 
he would not have thought of acting the double 
part. And so the very blessings of life we may 
turn into curses through our selfishness, pru- 
dence, cowardice and diplomacy. We have 
known a parent led away from church by a 
beautiful daughter. He wished to please her; 
he began to live for her; every whim of hers 
he would gratify. Her beauty was his pride, 
her intelligence his joy. And these things that 
were indeed blessings he allowed to be occasions 
of temptation. Instead of seeking to consecrate 
her beauty and intelligence to the Lord, he al- 
lowed himself to be led off by her into the world. 
And so a man's wealth, a real blessing if properly 
used, may become occasion for sin. In order 
to hold it or increase it, he yields to selfish 



TEMPTATION 69 

prudence ; becomes a moral coward, and, it may 
be, practices deception. How careful we should 
be to make the blessings of God really bless us, 
and in order that we may do so, we must live 
as before God, doing His will, and more anxious 
to have His smile than to keep any temporal 
blessings. 

2. God takes the part of His sinning child. 
He plagued Pharaoh. His very silence and ten- 
der dealings were a rebuke to God's Sin- 
Abraham. God never condones or ^^^S Child 
excuses sin. He forgives the penitent, but sin, 
whether in His children or others, grieves Him. 
However, He did not cast off Abraham because 
of his sin. He knew that the current of His 
child's life was right, and He would take time to 
correct the eddies. We had the pain of being 
present at the hanging of three criminals. The 
public was very indignant against them, cursing 
them for their crimes, but there was one old 
woman in the vast crowd who had nothing 
but blessing in her heart for one of them. 
It was her son, and the more the crowd cursed, 
the more she loved. " Like as a father pitieth 
his children, so the Lord pities them that fear 
Him." He corrects them; He chastises them; 



60 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

He teaches them better, but He never forsakes 
them. 

3. It is better to be a weak, struggling child 
of God than a strong son of Satan. Look at 
Which is ^^^ contrast between Pharaoh and 

Better? Abraham at the time of this sin 

and afterwards. Pharaoh impresses one as being 
the nobler of the two. As soon as he learns that 
Sarah is the wife of Abraham, he rebukes him 
for his sin, and returns to him his own. He does 
not even punish him for his double dealing. The 
selfishness, cowardice, and hypocrisy of Abra- 
ham were in sad contrast with the fairness, open- 
ness, and generosity of Pharaoh. But we must 
follow the two men to the end of their lives, in 
order to decide which one we would rather be. 
Where is Pharaoh to-day? He lived his life of 
sensuality, seeking earthly glory, with thousands 
of slaves to do his bidding. He died and was 
forgotten. His impress upon the world was al- 
most nothing. On the other hand, Abraham, 
linked by faith with God, overcomes his sinful 
tendencies, and becomes a real saint, ripens for 
glory, and impresses the world with his character, 
so that no name is now more highly esteemed by 
millions of people. He became father in the flesh 



TEMPTATION 61 

of the Jews, and, in the spirit, of Christians. It 
is better, however weakly, selfishly and cowardly 
you may be, to put yourself on the side of faith, 
righteousness, and virtue, and to let God mould 
you as He would have you, than to get the very 
best the world can give, living a life of inde- 
pendence and yet of degeneracy. Better be weak 
Abraham with the strength of God girdling you 
than strong Pharaoh left to himself. 

The difference between Abraham and Pharaoh 
is illustrated by the difference between the Belle- 
vue Hospital in New York and a hospital in 
Washington. At Bellevue the object is to cure 
disease ; in Washington it is to cultivate disease. 
The physicians in Bellevue deal with men and 
strive to make them well. The officials in Wash- 
ington deal with plants and strive to make them 
sick, so that they may understand and describe 
their diseases. Abraham was in the hands of 
the great Physician who had undertaken his cure. 
Pharaoh was in surroundings that cultivated the 
diseases of his soul, and the result was that he 
never grew any better. 

In Bellevue Hospital there is a ward for pris- 
oners. When a criminal in the Tombs becomes 
sick, he is sent there to be treated. In order 



62 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

to deliver him, you must not only cure his dis- 
ease, but break the bars that surround his cell. 
He is out of relation with the State and with the 
forces of life that make for health. Abraham 
was, to be sure, a patient in a ward, but he was 
not surrounded by bars. He had been made free 
through the grace of God. Pharaoh, on the 
other hand, was sick and a slave. He was in 
the hospital where diseases were promoted, sur- 
rounded at the same time by iron bars of sin. 
God's children, who have been made free through 
the blood of Christ, are not incarcerated by the 
powers of sin. Let us seek the liberty and the 
healing of Abraham, while we shun the diseases 
and bondage of Pharaoh. Our God is able not 
only to cure the diseases of sin, but to keep 
us free. " Thanks be to God which giveth us 
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 



CHAPTER VI 

MONEY 

Money Is one of our best friends and worst 
enemies. The love of it is the root of all evil; 
the use of it the root of all good. The mere 
possession of money is no index to character. 
Some men are rich, like Abraham and Job, be- 
cause they are industrious and honest. Their 
credit makes it easy for them to acquire wealth. 
Others are poor, like Moses and Elijah, Peter 
and Paul, Moody and Spurgeon, because their 
mission in the world is other than making money. 
Their poverty is an index to their faithfulness. 
For them to have turned aside to money-making 
would have been to disobey God. 

Other men are rich because they are dishonest. 
They have wrecked corporations, or cornered the 
food market, that they might fill their coifers. 
Other men are poor, again, because they refuse 
to adopt the tricks of trade, or to enter into con- 
spiracies to defraud. They chose to lose money 

63 



64 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

that they may save themselves. They have come 
to their poverty honestly. The poverty of 
others, however, is an index to shiftlessness, or 
dishonesty. They are poor, because they refuse 
to work, or have lost their credit by dishonest 
dealing. 

If, therefore, you can learn how a man has 
gained his wealth or his poverty, and then how 
he uses it, you have gained the index to his 
character. If one owns money, he commands a 
mighty force for Christ and the church, but if 
money owns him, he is the slave of a heartless 
master. If, on the other hand, he has the manly 
qualities which have been developed by honest 
struggles in poverty, he is rich and powerful 
without money. 

It is to be expected, therefore, that God, in 
speaking to men through an inspired Book, 
Stewards of should have something to say 
Capacity about money. And the message 

of the Bible is very definite. It says to every 
man of wealth : " You owe to God the capacity 
to make money.'' We read in I Samuel 2:7: 
" The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich." 
And His method of enriching is given in Deut. 
8:18: "Thou shalt remember the Lord thy 



MONEY 65 

God, for It is He that giveth power to get 
wealth." It is plain from this scripture that the 
talent for making money is the gift of God, 
to be used, like other gifts, for His glory: and 
making money for God's glory is as holy as 
praying. We need to hear, not less about the 
" sacred desk " but more about the sacred ledger, 
the sacred shop, the sacred store. Let us not 
pull the sacred down to the level of the secular, 
but lift the secular up to the plane of the sacred. 
Efface the distinction between sacred and secular 
by making everything sacred. Make money as 
religiously as you pray. 

The Bible says again to the man who makes 
money : " Keep this capacity for making money 
within the limits of honesty and Honesty 

love." Competition means war, ^^^ Love 

and the ethics of war is so low that deception is 
a virtue. Military men call it strategy; politi- 
cians call it diplomacy, but the English of it is 
lying. An officer who succeeds in deceiving an 
enemy and luring him into a trap, which causes 
his capture or death, is praised and promoted. 
A Russian general said " I can die for my Czar, 
and, of course, I can lie for him." International 
diplomacy has become such a science of deception 



66 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

that Bismark advised young diplomats to tell 
the truth on all occasions, because no one would 
believe them. 

The ethics of the battlefield and the political 
arena has been transferred to trade, so that 
A Life many men of business do not hesi- 

a Living tate to deceive in order to make 

larger profits. A man in an inquiry meeting 
declared that he could not be a Christian and do 
what he intended to do next wek. His profits 
depended upon labeling second-class goods as 
first-class. Such a man may make a living, but 
he cannot make a life. He builds up a fortune, 
while he tears down his character. The blood 
of his own soul is upon every dollar of his 
profits. He floats his business while he drowns 
his soul, for " They that will be rich fall into 
temptation and a snare, and into many foolish 
and hurtful lusts that drown men in destruction 
and perdition." His standard of ethics is profit 
and loss. Whatever pays is right; whatever 
loses is wrong. He is a moral suicide. God's 
standard is the Ten Commandments and the 
Golden Rule. The business man who adopts this 
standard is rich without money, while he who 
rejects it is a pauper with his millions, for " a 



MONEY 67 

man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth." 

The Bible also says to the money-maker. " Use 
your money in doing good." " Charge them that 
are rich in this world that they 
do good; that they be rich in 
good works." The method of doing good is 
defined by the word " ready to distribute, will- 
ing to communicate." " Remember the words 
of the Lord Jesus, how He said. It is more 
blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20 : 35). 
To get and hold is to become an octopus, with 
tentacles that take in, but never give off. It is 
to become a Dead Sea, with no fish in its waters, 
an ugly blot on the landscape, the octopus of 
geography. To give as we have received is to 
become a Sea of Galilee, with pure water full of 
life, a gem of beauty. Giving is a cleansing 
process. " Give alms of such things as ye 
have, and behold all things are clean unto you." 
(Luke 11:41). Wealth, however acquired, be- 
comes foul with selfishness, if no portion of it is 
used in doing good. More impure than the 
sewers of the city is the hoarded wealth of the 
misers who simply pile up riches and stand 
guard over the pile. It putrifies and fills the 



68 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

atmosphere with the miasma of meanness. To 
such men the message of the Bible is : " Go to 
now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your mis- 
eries that shall come upon you. Your riches 
are corrupted, and your garments are moth 
eaten. Your gold and your silver is cankered; 
and the rust of them shall be a witness against 
you, and shall eat your flesh as it were with 
fire." (James 5:13). 

If money has been accumulated by defraud- 
ing the hireling, one needs to read further: 
Nobility of '^ Behold the hire of the laborers 
Motive ^]^Q have reaped down your fields, 

which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and 
the cries of them which have reaped are entered 
into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth " (James 
6:4). Such is the experience of those who 
make and hoard money simply for the sake of 
hoarding. Let every money-maker ask the 
question : " What is my motive in making 
money ? " Has it become a great game ? Is it 
simply war or play? Do I wish to make money 
just as a football team wishes to win by making 
a higher score .^^ Is my motive simply to excel, 
and that people may say that I own more 
money than others.'^ If so, my picture is 



MONEY 69 

drawn for me by John Ruskin In the follow- 
ing words: 

" The first of all English games is making 
money. That is an all-absorbing game, and we 
knock each other oftener in playing that than 
in football, or in rougher sport. And it is ab- 
solutely without purpose. No one who engages 
in that game ever knows why. Ask a great 
money-maker what he intends to do with his 
money. He never knows ; he does not make it 
to do anything with it; he gets it only that he 
may get it. " What will you make of what you 
have got.? " you ask. " Well, I will get more," 
he says, just as at cricket, you get more runs. 
There is no use in the runs, but to get more 
than other people is the game; and there is no 
use in the money, but to have more of it than 
other people is the game." 

Such money-making without motive, or with 
low motive, cannot make manhood. It simply 
develops meanness. I have read of a Scotch laird 
who compelled his servant to pay him a shilling 
a week for working in his own garden, that he 
might enjoy with the recreation the pleasure of 
accumulating. A man who had heaped up a 
large fortune, it is said, while on his death bed 
gave a thousand pounds to a benevolent object. 



70 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

While the committee were drawing the papers, 
the dying miser said, " Gentlemen, will you not 
allow me ten per cent for cash payment ? " They 
agreed, and the miser died, pleased with the 
thought that he had made a hundred pounds by 
a sharp bargain. 

These may be extreme cases of meanness, but 
making money for the sake of making money 
is apt to result, sooner or later, in just such a 
character. 

The final and most emphatic message of Jesus 
is Make your inoney immortal. " Lay up for 
Making yourselves treasures in heaven." 

Immortal " Make to yourselves friends by 

means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that 
when it shall fail, they may receive you into 
eternal tabernacles." Rich men are exhorted to 
lay up for themselves a good foundation against 
the time to come, that they may lay hold upon 
the life which is life indeed. While God gives 
us all things richly to enjoy in this world, He 
would have us cultivate " other worldliness." 
Seek to transmute your money which is seen and 
temporal into character which is unseen and 
eternal. 

How can this be done most effectively ? How 



MONEY 71 

shall I give my money so that I shall be most 
richly blessed, and be the greatest How to 

blessing to others? The answer ^^^^ 

is simple. Give Scripturally. Learn what the 
Bible teaches on this subject and do that. In 
Luke 11 : 42, Jesus said, " Ye tithe mint and 
rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over 
judgment and the love of God: these ought ye 
to have done, and not to leave the other undone." 
" These ought ye to have done " is Christ's 
endorsement of the principle of tithing, and the 
Christian can have no higher authority. The 
Mosaic law demanded that one seventh of the 
time and one tenth of the income should be de- 
voted to the Lord; and the gospel never falls 
short of the law in its requirements, but rather 
goes beyond it. The Sermon on the Mount re- 
veals that the gospel demands of the Christian 
more than the law. The law says " Thou shalt 
not kill," but the gospel says, " Thou shalt not 
hate," etc., etc. 

One tenth is the minimum, while we should 
give in freewill offerings as much more as grati- 
tude may prompt. Let every young convert 
begin his Christian life by adopting this biblical 
method of laying aside one tenth of his income 



72 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

to be used in other ways than in support of him- 
self and family. Do this every week as far as 
possible. " On the first day of the week, let 
every one of you lay by him in store as God 
hath prospered him" (I Cor. 16:2). Remem- 
ber that Jesus stood over against the treasury 
and watched how they gave, and He still watches 
how rather than how much we give. The widow 
gave with the spirit of loving sacrifice, and this 
manner of giving counted for more with Christ 
than the abundance of the wealthy. Her two 
mites were really more than their larger gifts, 
because they meant more self-sacrifice. Indeed, 
Christ seems to take no account of the amount, 
but records only the loving sacrifice we make 
in giving. Such giving is an act of worship in 
which we express to God our gratitude and 
praise. 

John Wesley's motto was, " Make all you can ; 
save all you can ; give all you can." If you make 
and save with a view to giving, your labor is as 
religious as your prayers. " What are you do- 
ing this morning.? " asked a neighbor as he en- 
tered a blacksmith shop, while the smithy was 
striking the hot iron on the anvil. " Preaching 
the gospel to the regions beyond," was the reply, 



MONEY 73 

as he struck the iron a little harder, and made 
the sparks fly further. And the labor of this 
humble man was transfigured by the glory of a 
high and holy motive. 



CHAPTER VII 

AMUSEMENTS 

The things which amuse us do much toward 
moulding our characters for good or evil. It is, 
therefore, needful that the young Christian 
should be as careful about his amusements as 
his duties. There are certain principles by which 
he may be guided. 

Amusements that injure the body, weaken the 

mind, or corrupt the morals ought to be avoided. 

, ^ So with amusements that vitiate 

A Test 

our joys. The German proverb 

says, " The good is enemy of the better and the 

best.'' Amusement, fun, and pleasure may be 

good; but joy is better. Amusement is the dash 

of the spray, the sparkle on the surface; joy 

is the flow of the deep current in the soul. We 

should not sacrifice the current for the spray or 

the sparkle. Whenever, therefore, we find that 

amusement is entrenching upon our joy, we 

74 



AMUSEMENTS 75 

should sacrifice amusement, that joy may be 
saved. 

Amusements should always be avoided when 
they are associated with any great evil institu- 
tion. The people of Israel played before the 
golden calf. Their play was associated with the 
evil institution of idolatry. Paul said that he 
could eat meat offered to idols, for he regarded 
an idol as nothing, and it would not, therefore, 
injure him. He had a right to eat, but he had 
the higher right which was the right to give up 
his personal right for the good of the weaker 
brother. He therefore determined to surrender 
this right and exercise the higher right of self- 
denial for the benefit of others. Two jmen were 
in a boat above Niagara Falls. When they saw 
that the current was taking them down, by a bold 
stroke they reached the bank, and there on a tree 
was the placard, " No trespassing on these 
grounds." A farmer appeared with a fierce bull 
dog at his side, and one of the men was cruelly 
torn. The magistrate at Niagara used these 
words which are worthy of a place on the fly 
leaf of your Bible : " You had a right, sir, to 
placard your land, but in this case there was in- 
volved the higher right to surrender your right 



76 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

for the good of humanity, and, because you 
failed to do so, I send you to jail for thirty 
days," We may contend for the Christian privi- 
lege of indulging in certain things, while we 
forget the higher privilege of self-denial that 
we may have a larger influence for good. 

A safe rule for the young convert is never to 
indulge in any amusement that links him with a 
great evil institution. Try the 
card table, the dance, and the 
theatre by this test. The card table is a world- 
wide evil institution which you find in all coun- 
tries, Christian and pagan. It is the gambler's 
instrument. It has been blackened by dishonesty, 
stained by murder, and disgraced by innumer- 
able wrecks of character. A pack of cards is 
suggestive, not of an innocent game, but of a 
great foul institution which has been a curse to 
mankind. Shall I indulge, and thus link myself 
with this institution .f^ Or shall I deny myself, 
that I may not be suggestive of evil.f^ 

The square dance may be considered by 

some as an innocent pastime, if indulged in 

moderately, but in general it may 
xnc Jjcincc 

be said that dancing has become 

a world-wide institution of evil. The dance- 



AMUSEMENTS 77 

house cannot be described in polite society. 
Dancing is not only worldly, but In many of its 
forms it Is desperately wicked. Its associations 
are malodorous. There may be pleasure in the 
physical response to music; shall I yield to it, 
and thus associate myself with a bad institution ? 
The theatre as an institution Is also bad. 
There are some moral plays, as well as some 

moral actors and actresses, but, so 

^ T fi ^ +1. • 4. The Theatre 

lar as 1 can nnd, there is not a 

moral theatre In the world. Edwin Booth de- 
termined to establish a moral theatre, before 
whose footlights there should not be a display 
of spectacular obscenity. The result was that 
Booth's theatre failed and paid five cents on the 
dollar. Henry Irving determined that the Ly- 
ceum theatre should be moral, but the manage- 
ment had to change Its quality to keep from 
bankruptcy. Mary Anderson left the stage, and 
declared that on moral grounds she did not 
wish her children to attend the theatre. Mc- 
Cready would not allow his children to go to the 
theatre. Edwin Forrest, after hearing Dr. 
Brantly In Augusta, Ga., preach a sermon de- 
nouncing the theatre for Its Immorality, lingered 
after the service long enough to take the preach- 



78 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

er by the hand and say to him, " Sir, what you 
have said to-night is true, only you have not 
painted the picture as dark as it is." 

There is a difference between pleasure in the 
midst of business, and making a business of 
A Living pleasure. The pleasure-seeking 

^^^^^ spirit is a living death, for " she 

that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth " 
(I Tim. 5:6). If you will turn to Job 21. 12, 
you will find some of the results of this pleasure- 
seeking spirit. " They take the timbrel and 
harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. 
They spend their days in wealth, and in a mo- 
ment go down to the grave. Therefore they say 
unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not 
the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Al- 
mighty that we should serve Him? and what 
profit shall we have if we pray unto Him ? " 
When the pleasure-seeking spirit fills a man's 
life, he ceases to desire God. He says to Him, 
" Depart from us.'' He sees no profit in prayer 
or in the service of the Almighty. Pleasure is 
his god, and he becomes vain and empty like 
the god he worships. 

The picture of a pleasure-seeking life which 
is given us in the second chapter of Ecclesiastes 



AMUSEMENTS 79 

is enough to startle one who desires to be some- 
thing or do something in the Solomon's 
world. Solomon was rich enough Experience 
to have everything that he desired, and he set 
himself to seeking pleasure. The result was 
that he hated life, and declared that " All is 
vanity and striving after wind." Some one has 
described the palace of pleasure as a building 
" which has a gorgeous street entrance adorned 
with statuary and brilliant with variegated 
lights, and the passerby is lured in by strains 
of music. The exit is a dark, narrow, concealed 
rear-way which leads into the iSelds where swine 
are kept." As a gentleman entered the theatre 
several years ago, the usher beckoned . to him 
with the words, " This is the way to the pit." 
The word " pit " was so suggestive that the man 
turned and left the theatre in haste. However 
beautiful the entrance to the pleasure-seeking 
life, and however entrancing the music, the exit 
is into the swine field, and near the swine field is 
the precipice over which sooner or later we fall 
into the pit. 

The danger is that the pleasure-seeking spirit 
may displace the serious work of life. In the 
parable of the sower, the seed was " choked by 



80 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

the pleasures of this life" (Luke 8:14), and 
A Danger when one makes up his mind that 

Signal ii^Q gjj^j Qf ]j£^ jg simply to have a 

good time, duty is neglected, sacred obligations 
are ignored, business lags, the prospects of life 
wither, and the end is despair. Here is a good 
place to hold the red flag of danger. When 
the Duke of Orleans was in this country, he 
happened to be in a small village when a circus 
was there. He could not obtain dinner or any 
sort of service. The people of the hotel informed 
him that no one would work that day, for every- 
body was going to the show. Such a holiday 
once in a while might produce little harm, but 
suppose that village should decide to quit work 
and attend the show every day ; the result would 
be stagnation and death. Just so with the life 
of a man who allows pleasure to displace busi- 
ness, who lets fun and frolic swallow up the 
serious duties of life. The Romans became so 
greedy for amusement that they demanded great 
outlay in purchasing wild animals and gladiators 
for their enjoyment in the arena. This pleasure- 
seeking spirit so enervated the people of Rome 
that they became an easy prey to the serious 
Northmen who came down upon them. 



AMUSEMENTS 81 

As with the nation, so with the individual. 
Pleasure-seeking weakens character and makes it 
easy for us to be captured and Inglorious 

destroyed by evil habits. I have Retreat 

read of some cavalry-men who, during five or six 
years of rest, taught their horses to dance to 
the music of the band. It was great sport, but, 
when they were riding into battle and the band 
began to play, hoping to inspirit the soldiers, 
the horses stopped in the charge and began to 
dance. The result was the enemy swept down 
upon them and conquered them. Many a man 
has lost the battle of life for the same reason. 
He is so possessed by the pleasure-seeking spirit 
that, when he ought to be serious and dutiful, he 
is dancing, or gambling, or in some other way 
frittering away his time. 

After Napoleon Bonaparte had killed the 
Duke D'Enghien, the indignation of the French 
people was so intense that there was danger of a 
revolution. The wily Emperor quieted their 
consciences by producing for them the most mag- 
nificent ballet that Paris had ever seen. They 
rushed to the theatre and forgot their grievances. 
It is hard for conscience to assert itself when the 
pleasure-seeking spirit is master. 



82 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

Everything that any one ought to enjoy, the 
Christian may enjoy. What is sinful or hurtful 
The Better to body, mind, or soul, should not 

^^y be indulged in by any one, and 

such indulgence displaces a purer enjoyment. 
If the young Christian will take Jesus Christ 
as the umpire of his life, submitting to Him his 
pleasures as well as his duties, his life will be 
full of light, and the shadows that come will 
only refresh. Jesus said, " I am the light of 
the world. He that foUoweth me shall not walk 
in darkness, but shall have the light of life.'' 
And this light never becomes darkness. It 
grows " brighter and brighter till the perfect 
day." 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN 



Napoleon said, " Imagination rules the world.'' 
Certainly there can be no great achievement 
where there is no ability to conceive a great ideal. 
If our day-dreams do not make us content sim- 
ply with reverie, they will stir us to heroic 
action. Castles in the air may become solid 
structures. 

In Col. 1 : 9-13 we have a picture of the ideal 
Christian and every young Christian, will be 
profited by a careful study of his features: 
" For this cause we also, since the day we heard 
it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire 
that ye might be filled with the knowledge of 
His will in all wisdom and spiritual understand- 
ing ; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto 
all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, 
and increasing in the knowledge of God; 
strengthened with all might according to His 
glorious power, unto all patience and long-suf- 

83 



84 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

fering with joy fulness; giving thanks unto the 
Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers 
of the inheritance of the saints in light; who 
hath delivered us from the power of darkness 
and hath translated us into the kingdom of His 
dear Son." 

The ideal Christian is " filled with the knowl- 
edge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual un- 
derstanding." It is not the knowl- 
edge of astronomy, botany, phi- 
losophy or geology that develops Christian char- 
acter, though these are important in their places. 
A man who knows all science and history may 
still be a bad man. But if he is filled with a 
knowledge of God's will, such fulness will make 
him wise and spiritual. We learn God's will 
from the Bible, and hence the importance of per- 
sistent Bible study. A Christian can afford to 
miss breakfast, dinner, or supper rather than to 
neglect his Bible. Starving the body is not so 
fatal as starving the soul. Let not the news- 
paper or the magazine, however attractive, push 
aside the Word of God, and the business, how- 
ever prosperous, that causes the Christian to 
neglect his Bible study impoverishes more than 
it enriches. 



THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN 85 

" That ye might walk worthy of the Lord in 
all pleasing." Nothing can please Christ more 
than seeing His people in their ^ Worthy 
daily lives maintaining a standard Walk 
worthy of Him. This does not mean that we 
are to be worthy Christians only in crises and 
emergencies. Walking is the daily hum-drum of 
life. We should " run with patience the race 
that is set before us," and strive to be the first 
to reach the goal, so as to receive the victor's 
crown. We may mount up with wings as eagles, 
but such running and flying are not the tests of 
character that every-day drudgery is. The 
man who is faithful in the common places is 
sure to be faithful in the crises. " He that is 
faithful in that which is least is faithful also 
in much." 

A man in Chicago heard a rescue mission 
worker make an earnest address, urging upon 
his hearers to become Christians. The man, who 
had been a detective in former years, made up 
his mind that he would shadow the speaker for 
twenty-four hours, in order that he might decide 
whether or not he was really what he claimed to 
be. On the following night he returned to the 
mission and said, " I am now ready to become a 



86 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

Christian. I heard our brother make his earnest 
plea last night, and I determined to watch him 
for twenty-four hours. I believe he is sincere, 
and I want you to pray for me." How many of 
us could stand the detective's shadowing ? Would 
he find us going to places and doing things un- 
worthy of the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, you 
may be certain that he would not become a 
Christian upon our testimony. 

To walk worthy of Christ is the highest pos- 
sible standard, and the motive to please Him in 
all things will make the Christian consecrated 
and self-sacrificing. Rev. F. B. Meyer, of Lon- 
don, tells of a man whose income is $10,000 a 
year. He lives on $1,000 and gives the remain- 
ing $9,000 to foreign missions. He tells of an- 
other whose Income is $10,000 ; he lives on $1,250 
a year and gives away the remainder. Dr. 
Meyer knows of a governess who earns $500 a 
year, and gives away $250 ; he speaks of another 
man with a comfortable competence, who remains 
in business and gives all his profits to the Lord. 
Sarah Hosmer, working in a factory and living 
in a garret, gave $50 a year for the spread of 
the gospel. Are these people fanatics, or have 
they not caught a glimpse of the vocation which 



THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN 81 

Is worthy of Jesus Christ, who gave Himself 
on the cross for them? 

" Fruitful in every good work." A life that 
is full of the knowledge of Christ cannot fail 
to bear good fruit, and there is t^ . r , 
nothing artificial about it. It is 
not fruit hung upon the branches, but growing 
out of them. I saw at an " Exposition " apples, 
peaches, grapes, and oranges made of papier 
mache, and they looked just like fruit. But 
there was no odor and no lusciousness. They 
simply appeared to be fruit. There is so-called 
Christian fruit like the papier mache not pro- 
duced by internal life. It is not grown, but is 
put on. In Galatians 5 : 22 is described- a cluster 
of fruit produced by the Christ life within us: 
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
ness, temperance." It is the business of every 
Christian to grow fruit of this kind. 

" Fruitful in every good work " means much 
fruit rather than great fruit. The world is fed, 
not by the rare specimens which we see at the 
" Fair," but by the little grapes and the little 
grains of wheat and com. " Herein is my 
Father glorified that ye bear much fruit," We 



88 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

may be too ambitious to bear big fruit. " Do 
good unto all men." Let no opportunity pass, 
and it may be in eternity you will find that the 
little deeds were the great deeds in their results. 

On the national arms of Scotland is the en- 
graving of a thistle, and it means that one little 
thistle was the salvation of the nation. During 
the invasion of Scotland by the Danes the enemy 
were advancing in the dark, when one of them, 
pricking his bare foot by a sharp thistle, cried 
out with pain. The cry was heard by a sentry 
who sounded the alarm, and the Scottish soldiers, 
roused by the cry, gained the battle. If I can 
only be a little thistle, pricking the foot of evil, 
I may bear fruit to the glory of God. 

Julian Legrand, the great Paris merchant, 
relates that the firm to which he belonged was in 
financial straits. They decided in the morning 
that it would take $100,000 to tide them over. 
Legrand went out and sought a loan among his 
friends, but the times were so stringent that no 
one would lend him a dollar. He returned to 
his office dejected and despairing. While sitting 
there in a gloomy state of mind, there was a tap 
at the door. The man who entered came up to 
the desk and said, 



THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN 89 

" I hear, Mr. Legrand, that you are in need 
of money." 

" Yes," repHed the merchant, " we certainly 
are." 

" How much do you need.^ " he asked. 

" Not less than $100,000." 

" Draw me your note," continued the stranger, 
" for that amount without interest for one year, 
and I will give you my check for it." 

Legrand looked at the man in astonishment, 
conscious that he had seen him before, but not 
able to identify him. 

" But pray, why have you come to our re- 
Hef.?" 

" When I was a small boy," said the stranger, 
" attending the public school, you came as one 
of the commissioners on examination day. I was 
poor, shabbily dressed, and thought that you 
would, of course, pay attention to the rich men's 
children, but after the exercises you put your 
hand on my head, spoke some kind words, told 
me to persevere, that I could do better if I would 
try, and assured me that the way to honor was 
open to all alike ; all I had to do was to be reso- 
lute and push on. That, sir, was the turning 
point in my life. From that hour my soul has 



90 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

aspired, and I have never reached a goal with- 
out blessing you in my heart. I have prospered 
and am wealthy; I now offer you but a poor 
return for the soul-wealth you gave me in that 
by-gone time." 

Little did Mr. Legrand suppose when he was 
speaking to the poor boy in the school that he 
would reap such a fruitage from that little deed. 
And doubtless we shall meet many such surprises 
in heaven. What we thought were the great 
occasions on earth in God's estimation may have 
been small and insignificant; what we thought 
was the trivial may have been in His sight the 
most important. 

" Increase in the knowledge of God." This 

means growing by means of the knowledge of 

^ , God. It is the knowledece of God 

Growth . ^ _ HIT 

that makes us grow. Many 

Christians are dwarfs because they know so little 

of God. To think God's thoughts is to grow 

intellectually, and to know and love God's will 

is to grow spiritually. An old infant Is a sad 

sight. For a child to be deprived of its growth 

is a great calamity. I saw such a pitiful object 

in the hospital. From four years of age there 

had been no growth for thirty-five years. Chris- 



THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN 91 

. tians many years old may be infants in size, 

simply because they have not learned more of 

God. 

" Strengthened with all might according to 

His glorious power unto all patience." The 

power is not inherent. It comes ^ 

Power 
from God, and the measure of it 

is not our ability, but His might ; and the need of 
it is for patience. We are apt to think that we 
need power only for work, but there may be 
more need of power to endure. A poor mother 
whose drunken son was before a court in New 
York charged with crime fell dead in the witness 
box, when she was asked to testify against her 
son. The strain was more than her neryes could 
stand. What she needed was the power of God 
in her moments of greatest weakness. A daugh- 
ter, who went from her place of business in New 
York to a New Jersey town, found her mother 
intoxicated, and in a fit of despair committed 
suicide. The poor girl had power to work, but 
not power to endure so great a shock. If she 
had called upon Christ, He would have strength- 
ened her for even that ordeal. 

Barney Barnato, the millionaire of North Af- 
rica, committed suicide by throwing himself into 



92 YOUNG CONVERT'S PROBLEMS 

the sea. He saw that his great fortune was dissi- 
pated, and he could not bear the thought of 
becoming again a poor man. The sense of fail- 
ure broke his heart. I wish I could have stood 
beside him on the deck of the vessel, beneath the 
clear sky, and whispered to him of God in 
Christ who could give him strength to endure, 
not with melancholy and moroseness, but with 
joy fulness. Under the heaviest burdens we may 
sing. In the darkest night we may shout His 
praise. When Susannah Wesley was dying, she 
said to her weeping children at the bedside, 
" When I am gone, sing to God a hymn of 
praise," and when her spirit departed, the chil- 
dren with trembling voices and weeping eyes 
sang their song of praise for a mother now glori- 
fied with Christ. The ideal Christian is the per- 
son who can be sorrowful and yet rejoice, cast 
down and yet lifted up, patient and longsufFering 
with joy. 

" Giving thanks to the Father which hath 
made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance 

^ . , of the saints of lie^ht." We thank 

Gratitude . ° 

God not simply for the inher- 
itance which is " incorruptible, undefiled and that 
fadeth not away," but for the fitness to enjoy it. 



THE IDEAL CHRISTIAN 93 

Going to heaven unfit for the place would be a 
calamity. Christ is preparing a place for us 
while the Holy Spirit is preparing us for the 
place. Thanks be to God for heaven! Thanks 
be to God still more for the preparation of heart 
which makes heaven everywhere! 

" Who hath delivered us from the power of 
darkness and hath translated us into the king- 
dom of His dear Son.'' Death 
to a Christian is a translation, but 
we have not to wait until we die to be translated 
from one kingdom to another. We leave " the 
prince of the power of the air " for the kingdom 
of His dear Son. The chains of darkness which 
bind us have been broken and we walk in the 
light. The emigrant comes from Russia to 
America and becomes a citizen by renouncing 
the sovereignty of the Czar of Russia, and ac- 
knowledging his allegiance to the Constitution 
of this country. So we renounce the rule of the 
world, the flesh, and the Devil, when we ac- 
knowledge the allegiance of Christ. The Lamb 
who died to redeem us Is the King who lives to 
rule us. If the young Christian will let Christ 
reign in him. He will always give deliverance 
and his life will be ideal. 



SEP 6 1906 



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